Blog

I recently visited the Salk Institute here in San Diego and was reminded of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine and the tremendous impact it has had on polio eradication and human healthcare. In 1954, there were 35,000 new cases of polio reported in the US. After his vaccine had been used for 7 years, the number of new cases was down to just 161. This was a truly remarkable achievement. That kind of innovation is what we are hoping to find and nurture through the opening of our newest R&D satellite in San Diego.

We’re still feeling HYPE-ed from yesterday’s event at the Free Library of Philadelphia announcing our $5 million, 3-year GSK IMPACT Grant for Philadelphia, awarded to a group of 10 amazing nonprofits led by The Food Trust! Building on the incredible success of The Food Trust’s HYPE (Healthy You. Positive Energy.) program, currently in dozens of schools across Philadelphia, Get HYPE Philly! will take HYPE beyond the classroom and into after-school programs and community activities across North Philly.

Research suggests that there is significant opportunity for discovering new medicines by exploring kinases. That's why we're so excited that today the SGC and UNICAMP announced the launch of an open-access research facility, the Protein Kinase Chemical Biology Center, in Campinas, Brazil. The center will be a hub of the SGC and will produce chemical probes to define the roles of historically understudied kinases.

Today millions of people around the world are joining together to show their support for people living with rare diseases. As the name implies, a rare disease affects a small number of people – fewer than 200,000 Americans at any one time.Collectively, though, rare diseases are not uncommon. There are around 7,000 known rare diseases affecting approximately 25 million people in the US.

This week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the measles outbreak in the US has grown to 121 cases in 17 states, and 85% of those cases are likely linked to one traveler who became infected overseas and then visited an amusement park in California where it began to spread.

Healthcare wasn’t a top focus for President Obama in last night’s State of the Union address, only briefly referencing the Affordable Care Act, the Administration’s Ebola response, and proposing a new initiative on precision medicine “to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes.”

Philadelphia is fortunate to have an institution like The Barnes Foundation—a unique arts organization with one of the finest collections of post-impressionist and early modern paintings—as a member of the community.They also realize that there are many factors that contribute to a healthy community, including vaccinations.